Offbeat Oregon History podcast

A special weekend episode to announce a live history show on Friday, May 29, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Polk County Fairgrounds in Rickreall! It's a fundraiser so it costs $10; we're trying to help save the Fairgrounds, which is threatened with closure due to electrical issues that they can't afford to fix. We scheduled it for the weekend AFTER Memorial Day so it won't clash with anyone's vacation plans! Also, a short reading from the Lockley Files, the recollections and a tall tale from an old stagecoach driver, as told to legendary Oregon Journal columnist Fred Lockley: 'Honey, I shrunk the horse team!'

LEGENDARY RACONTEUR REUB Long, the “Sage of Fort Rock,” packed a whole lot into his 76 years living in central Oregon. Most of it — though by no means all — had to do with horses. But, as you may remember from last week’s column, by the time he was settling down on his ranch in the mid-1960s to take it easy and write his memoirs, Reub Long had worked at least a dozen different side hustles, from dairy farming to running a pool hall. But none of those physical skills are what he’s most remembered for today; none of those things are keeping the memory of Reub Long alive. They’re not what’s bringing tourists to tiny Fort Rock to this day to ask about him at the Fort Rock General Store downtown, or in the nearby Fort Rock Homestead Village Museum gift shop. Today, Reub is mostly remembered as a gifted teller of impromptu tall tales — as he wrote in his book, not exactly lying to people, but “baffling them a bit.” (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2405d-1209a.reub-long-tall-tale-teller-2of2-187.651.html)

Oregon was once known as a place full of “great liars” — tellers of tales so tall they'd cause every pair of pants in the room to spontaneously burst into flame. Central Oregon storyteller Reub Long could hold his own with the best of them. (Fort Rock, Lake County; 1930s, 1940s, 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2405c-1209a.reub-long-sage-of-fort-rock-1of2-187.650.html)

Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, shipped to the Beaver State for training (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408d.oregon-maneuver-ww2.html)

Built in six months, the bustling metropolis of 40,000 lasted just six years before being turned, by order of the U.S. Government, into a ghost town and cut up for salvage. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2505b1004d.camp-adair-699.071.html)

BY EARLY 1941, the U.S. Army knew it was about to get sucked into at least one of the wars that were already raging around the world. The Selective Service and Training Act had passed the previous fall, and already young American men were being drafted into the Army, swelling its ranks with green recruits. Sooner or not much later they’d be in combat, fighting for their lives. There was no time to be lost — those combat noobs had to be trained and hardened and prepared so that they would have as good a chance as possible when thrown into the fight. With that in mind, the Army started looking for suitable locations for a combat-training campus between Portland and San Francisco on the West Coast. It would need to be about 65,000 acres and, in addition to the usual building sites and gunnery ranges, it would have to include geography similar to the sites where the fighting was expected to happen: rolling hills, steep slopes, swampy terrain, thick forests, and something approximating jungle foliage. Moving very fast — after all, new conscripts were coming in all the time — the Army settled on two prospective sites: one near Eugene, and one just north of Corvallis. The Corvallis site won the toss — there were fewer residents to be displaced, and the railroad and highway infrastructure was more developed. That was in June 1941. By the end of that year, the funds were allocated and the plans drawn up, and nine months later Oregon’s second largest city had spring into being out of the swampy ground. (Camp Adair, Benton County; 1940s, 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2505b1004d.camp-adair-699.071.html)

State regulators didn't care, so neither did some dairy farmers, who left dead cows to rot among their dairy herds and brought milk to market in the same cans they used to slop the hogs; Portland led the nation in baby deaths as a result. (Portland, Multnomah and Columbia county; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1208b-bad-milk-was-killing-babies-in-portland.html)

Searching for a fabulous source of gold formerly belonging to a friend who'd mysteriously disappeared, miners stumbled across Crater Lake. They never found the gold, though; could it be that it's still out there somewhere? (Yreka, Siskiyou County (Calif.); 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207b-crater-lake-discovered-by-legendary-gold-mine-seekers.html)

Pulp writer and religious figure L. Ron Hubbard figures prominently in the most spectacular story of action against “Japanese submarines” in Oregon waters. It's called, with tongue firmly in cheek, the “Battle of Cape Lookout.” (Off Cannon Beach, Clatsop County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407a.sunken-submarine-rumors.html)

James Lappeus came to Portland from the gold fields of California, where he was a gambler, saloonkeeper and general mining-town rowdy. His career as a cop was dogged by rumors he'd offered to spring a murderer for a $1,000 bribe. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1850s, 1860s, 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207a-james-lappeus-crooked-gambler-police-chief-in-portland.html)

Of all the prisoners who tried to escape from Oregon's state prison, the “yeggs” were most successful — if “successful” is the right word. Their schemes for leaving the jailhouse behind included a tunneling scheme right out of “The Shawshank Redemption.” (Salem, Marion County; 1890s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207d-safecrackers-were-good-at-jailbreaks.html)

What looked like a rotting-away hunk of scrap steel was a rare artifact of Portland's World War II shipbuilding industry — but the discovery was made just a few days too late. (Zigzag, Columbia County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207e-rusty-lifeboat-turned-out-to-be-relic-of-second-world-war.html)

After a beachfront landowner discovered a loophole in the law and fenced off “his” beach, other oceanfront property owners were eager to follow suit. Governor Tom McCall was determined to stop them, and this is how he did it. (Cannon Beach, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1206a-how-tom-mccall-saved-public-beaches.html)

For decades after the Tillamook Burn, classes of schoolchildren were bused out to help replant. Today, thousands of Oregonians, on trips to the beach, can point to a thriving patch of forest and say, “We planted those trees.” (Tillamook, Yamhill, Washington county; 1950s, 1960s, 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408b.schoolkids-replant-tillamook.html)

Quick action by state forester Lynn Cronemiller prevented the devastating forest fire from claiming hundreds of lives when a furnace-stoking wind blew in from Eastern Oregon, flogging the fire toward the sea. (Washington, Yamhill, Tillamook County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408a.tillamook-burn-pt2-the-legacy.html)

A hard-pressed crew tried to snake just a few more logs out before quitting for the day, hoping nothing would go wrong in the tinder-dry forest. Unfortunately, something did. (Forest Grove, Washington County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407d.tillamook-burn-1933-outbreak.html)

Is there any truth to the stories of shanghaiings of the cigar-store Indian and of the dozens of dead guys found in the basement of the funeral parlor next door to the “Snug Harbor Saloon”? Well ... maybe. But then again ... yeah, no. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407c.bunco-kelley-part2-the-myths.html)

He was Portland's most notorious bad guy, with his fingers in everything from shanghaiing sailors to smuggling opium. But ironically, when he was finally sent to prison, it was for a murder he clearly didn't commit. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407b.bunco-kelley-part1-the-facts.html)

1860s Bannock leader disappeared as mysteriously as he appeared, leaving behind nothing but frontier folklore and a trail of 17-inch-long moccasin prints; a probably-untrue rumor claims Nampa, Idaho, was named after him. (Malheur County; 1850s, 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1409b.304.chief-bigfoot-legend.html)

Fishermen working in heavy 24-foot boats at the mouth of the Columbia kept getting sucked out onto the bar and drowning in its massive breakers. Their odds of not surviving a season were as high as 1 in 15. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1880s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1206d-most-dangerous-catch-salmon-on-columbia-river-bar.html)

Ashamed to show his face in Astoria after causing the loss of the biggest passenger liner on the West Coast, Thomas Doig slunk away to South America and remade himself as a military man. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408c.300.great-republic-wreck.html)

Sometime in 1915, a 40-year-old Black woman named Frankie Baker stepped off the train at Portland’s Union Station. She had come to stay; Oregon would be her home for the rest of her life. At that time, Portland had a a reputation as a good place to hide out when you were on the lam. It was far off the beaten path; but the town had all the cultural perquisites of civilization, or most of them anyway. Plus, the people of Oregon had a reputation for minding their own business. So a lot of people who got into trouble back east came to Portland hoping for a fresh start. And yes, Frankie was one of them. But she wasn’t running from the law, or from an abusive spouse. She was running from a popular song. Frankie Baker, you see, was the Frankie — of “Frankie and Johnny” fame. ... (Portland, Multnomah County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/21-04.frankie-baker-they-done-her-wrong-596.html)

THE STORY TOLD in “Frankie and Johnny” is very well known — the song has been covered by at least 250 recording artists over the last 120 years. Mae West made it her theme song. Elvis Presley’s recording earned him a gold record. Originally a ragtime piece, it’s been adopted into jazz (Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck …), country (Johnny Cash, Doc Watson, Jimmie Rogers …), blues (Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Joe Callicott …), rock-and-roll (Jerry Lee Lewis, Van Morrison, Gene Vincent …) — basically, every musical style that’s come along since the end of the 19th century. Somewhere out there, there is probably even a dubstep version. I couldn't find one, but I did find Lena Horne's. And the list goes on and on. Of course, it should be no big surprise that the story the song tells is not strictly true. But, what is the real story, you might ask? The front cover of one of the first nationally-published sheet-music versions of Frankie and Johnny, published by Tell Taylor in 1912. (Image: Square Dance Resource Net) (link to the PDF of the sheet music: https://offbeatoregon.com/assets-2021/21-04.frankie-baker-he-done-her-wrong/FrankieAndJohnny-LeightonBrosRenShields-1.pdf ) Well … (St. Louis, Missouri; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/21-04.frankie-baker-they-done-her-wrong-596.html)

Charles “Black Bart” Bolton's neighbors in San Francisco thought his money came from ownership in gold mines. It turned out it came from furtive excursions northward to rob stagecoaches in Oregon and northern California. (Siskiyou Pass, Jackson County; 1880s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1401d.black-bart-gentleman-stage-robber-poet.html)

Two motor lifeboat crews went out on the bar to save three surviving sailors. Both boats went to the bottom of the sea — but not a man was lost on either crew, and all the survivors were rescued. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1506d.CursedShips-RosecransRescue.html)

The big oil tanker had weathered two major catastrophes in the previous year — a stranding and a colossal fire. But for 33 doomed crew members, the third time would be the charm — or, rather, the hex. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1506c.cursed-ships-rosecrans-344.html)

At the pay the city of Sandy was offering, Otto Austin Loel was the only man willing to take the job. He didn't turn out to be much of a bargain ... but it wouldn't be until years later that the town learned how much worse he could have been. (Sandy, Clackamas County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1506a.sandy-police-chief-executed-for-murder-342.html)

“This is an age of do-it-first,” said Silas Christofferson, and proceeded to launch his spindly kite-like “aeroplane” from the roof of a downtown hotel — making aviation history in the heart of Oregon's biggest town. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408e.302.silas-christofferson-portland-hero-aviator.html)

Neighbors wondered if the eight-foot-tall corpse found by developer at what today is YWCA Camp Westwind was evidence that an old Native American legend of a pirate ship is true; if so, there might actually be booty buried there, some say. (Cascade Head, Lincoln County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1204e-giant-skeleton-evidence-of-pirate-treasure-legend.html)

75 years ago, without realizing who he was, Wallowa County included Bruce “Blue” Evans — leader of the gang that massacred dozens of innocent Chinese miners back in 1887 — on a plaque commemorating its earliest white settlers. (Enterprise, Wallowa County; 1880s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1204b-monument-mass-murderer-chinese-miners.html)

The Melanope's maritime career started with a witch's curse. But her most dramatic story was the torrid, doomed love affair its skipper carried on with the heiress who bought the ship so she could be with him as he sailed it. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1506b.cursed-ships-melanope-343.html)

By far the most embarrassing jailbreak in state history happened when a murderer simply walked out the back door of a Motel 6 during an unsupervised “date” with a woman officials thought was his fiancee. (Salem, Marion County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207c-carl-cletus-bowles-jailbreak-during-conjugal-visit.html)

Ancient electrical wiring ignited Portland's legendary Forestry Building, a structure made of massive, flawless old-growth logs that had been built for the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1206c-forestry-building-biggest-log-cabin-burned.html)

Historic steam schooner vanished on a calm night in 1930, leaving lifeboats and debris floating in the water — but no bodies, alive or dead. Was it a violent micro-storm? A “seaquake”? A boiler explosion? We'll never really know. (Gold Beach, Curry County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1206b-mysterious-disappearance-of-steamer-south-coast.html.html)

Ruth Judd was in a fierce argument with her friends Annie Leroi and Sammy Samuelson. Furious, she stood up to go. She took her drink cup to drop it off in the kitchen sink. When she got there — well, something happened. Something involving a kitchen knife, a Colt .25 automatic, and possibly another, larger-caliber pistol... (Phoenix, Arizona; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/21-03.trunk-murders-anne-leroi-595.html)

OREGON DIVORCEE AGNES Anne “Annie” LeRoi arrived in Phoenix in the first few months of 1931 with her best friend and roommate, schoolteacher Hedvig “Sammy” Samuelson. They were climate refugees: Sammy had tuberculosis, and at the time the only cure for “consumption” was a dry climate and rest. Back then, many patients with TB waited until they were so far gone that the climate couldn’t save them; essentially, they moved to Arizona to die. Sammy wasn’t one of them; her case was mild. But, although she didn’t know it, she, too, was moving to Arizona to die. She had less than nine months to live. So did Annie. Neither one of them would die of tuberculosis, though. (Phoenix, Arizona; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/21-03.trunk-murders-anne-leroi-595.html)

Two of them had movies made about their wartime exploits — “30 Seconds over Tokyo” and “The Great Escape”; a third, captured and imprisoned in the raid, returned to Japan after the war as a Christian missionary. (Pendleton, Umatilla County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1505a.part3-doolittles-pendleton-raiders-337.html)

Robert S. Clever, Everett “Brick” Holstrom, Henry “Hank” Potter and Robert G. Emmens were four Oregon aviators who did the Beaver State proud in what seemed like a suicide mission over enemy territory. (Pendleton, Umatilla County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1504d.part2-doolittles-pendleton-raiders-336.html)

Oregon played a vital role in America's answer to Pearl Harbor — the daring daylight airstrike on Tokyo and other Japanese cities that provided a much-needed morale boost during the dark days of 1942. (Pendleton, Umatilla County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1504c.part1-doolittles-pendleton-raiders.335.html)

Although she's most remembered for being the mistress of a famous man, journalist and rodeo performer Mona Bell Hill was, on her own, one of the most interesting people ever to live in Oregon — and, to the government, one of the most vexing. (Bonneville, Multnomah County; 1910s, 1920s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1706d.mona-bell-wild-west-bearcat-449.html)

The Columbia, the Great river of West, was known for spectacular scenery and phenomenal fishing; Oregon has traded that for a placid, lake-like waterway and cheap hydroelectric power. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1009a_celilo-falls-part-of-once-wild-Columbia.html)

The Mindora and the Merrithew had docked next to each other in San Francisco, arrived within a few days of each other, wrecked within a few hours of each other, and washed up on the beach within a few miles of each other. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1505b.mindora-merrithew-double-shipwreck-338.html)

Caught by a railroad “bull,” the thief shot his way out and ran for it. But an accurate shot by the dying guard and some persistent police work brought the bad guy to justice in a pistol-waving scene in a seedy Albina hotel room. (Albina, Multnomah County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1205a-roaring-20s-railroad-murder-mystery-solved.html)

Because of how it's chartered, the ghost town of Greenhorn remained an incorporated city even when its population was zero — but it couldn't defend its city hoosegow from the midnight raiders of Canyon City one summer night. (Grant and Baker County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1505d.greenhorn-smallest-city-jail-stolen-340.html)

As they hung in the riggings of the sailing ship Etoile du Matin waiting for death, they felt their ship start to break apart — but the piece that broke off first was the keel, enabling the ship to float upriver to safety. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1840s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1504b.etoile-matin-miracle-shipwreck.334.html)

But did Lischen M. Miller create the story of Muriel Trevenard, the mysterious young woman who came to Newport in the 1870s and vanished ... or did she merely write down a story that locals whispered to each other on stormy nights? (Newport, Lincoln County; 1870s, 1890s, 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1709a.muriel-trevenard-evan-macclure-yaquina-bay-lighthouse-ghosts-459.html)

WHEN IT WAS over, the survivors in Heppner had an awful job ahead of them. A quote from the Portland Oregonian, reprinted in DenOuden’s article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, sums it up: “Scenes at Heppner are indescribable in their gruesomeness, their anguish, their awful desolation. No pen can exaggerate the horrors they present. Every heap of debris may contain a human forming decomposition. Many do reveal such spectacles when uncovered, and meantime Willow Creek, as if to mock the dead, has returned to a purling brooklet.” (Heppner, Umatilla County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412c1004c.heppner-flood-worst-in-history-680.070.html)

ON JUNE 15, 1903, a strange little article appeared in the Portland Morning Oregonian. “It is reported that a tremendous cloudburst occurred at Heppner late in the afternoon,” the article states. “All communication with that town has been cut off and nothing definite can be learned.” The silence must have struck the editors as ominous. Heppner was a modern 20th-century town, with a telegraph office and a telephone exchange. Also, by press time they would have at least heard rumors that a massive, unsanitary slug of muddy water clotted with farm animals, household goods, and other domestic debris had just gushed downhill through the towns of Lexington and Ione following the banks of the usually-tiny Willow Creek, doing considerable property damage. Lexington and Ione were just downstream from Heppner. It wouldn’t be until late Sunday night, well past the hour the Oregonian was on the presses, that the outside world would start to learn the full story: At 5:20 p.m. on that sultry Sunday afternoon, a wall of muddy, turbulent water 30 to 40 feet high had slammed into the town, scooping up roughly a third of its buildings and killing 247 of Heppner’s 1,290 residents. It was the worst flash-flood disaster in U.S. history with the sole exception of Pennsylvania’s Johnstown Flood, measured by loss of life. (The hurricane-driven flooding that struck North Carolina earlier this year, including the city of Asheville, killed 129, including 26 who are still missing). And it remains the deadliest disaster of any kind in the history of Oregon. (Heppner, Umatilla County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412c1004c.heppner-flood-worst-in-history-680.070.html)

Jovial and gregarious, Adelhelm Odermatt locked his sights on a vision of a hilltop monastery — and then deployed himself like a jovial, glad-handing, never-sleeping bombshell to make it happen. It was a near thing, but he pulled it off. (Mt. Angel, Marion County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1505c.adelhelm-odermatt-mt-angel-abbey-339.html)

“Amsterdam Jack” Murray claimed it was all a misunderstanding, but the jury obviously suspected he'd intended to murder his wife's brother all along; then the appeals court learned he was a bigamist to boot. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1709d.john-murray-murders-brother-in-law-462.html)